Psychological Heat
by Duck Life
Summary: A high-school student dies and the team investigates. Meanwhile, Castle suffers an injury and it has an interesting effect on his brain. Please R&R!
1. Chapter 1

Two girls worked over a black lab table, scraps of litmus paper strewn around them. "Taste test next?" one asked. Her friend confirmed it with a nod and the girl reached for one of several small plastic cups in front of them. She dipped her tongue into the thick white liquid, smacking her lips together obnoxiously as she tasted. "Definitely milk."

"Obviously," her friend sighed, marking something on a lab sheet. The other girl set down the first cup and took another, trickling it into her mouth. She paused a moment.

"Tap water," she said, sounding a little uncertain. Her friend bent down to draw a check on the sheet. A choking sound from somewhere above her made her look up. The other girl was gagging, keeling over onto the lab table. Her flailing arm sent the array of sample beverages soaring across the room. Another classmate screamed.

* * *

Beckett's car darted forward, the engine revving. "Slow down!" she practically shrieked, glaring at Castle. He was sitting in _her _seat, driving a car that was never meant to be maneuvered by a non-cop, and he wasn't even listening to her.

"Relax," he said. "This isn't Driver's Ed, I know what I'm doing." He reached up and angled the rearview mirror.

"What are you checking?" she asked, watching the mirror cautiously, sure that he would snap it off. Civilians weren't supposed to be behind that wheel, and especially a rampaging storm of destruction like Castle. (She mentally resisted a Derrick Storm pun. Not the time to be obsessing, not over _his _books.)

"My hair," he explained. "I've got this cowlick thing-"

"Look at the road!" she ordered. He rolled his eyes but nevertheless directed his gaze toward the vacant street in front of him. They were heading back to the precinct after wrapping up a case, and after days of being berated by him, she had finally allowed him to drive the car. At the time, she had expected that he would follow her directions. In retrospect, that was ridiculously nearsighted of her.

"So, now that you're sitting in that seat, do you see what I meant about the wire poking into you?" he said after a moment, eyes obediently trained on the asphalt front of them. She rolled her eyes and ignored his comment, subconsciously wedging her thumb between the wire and her back.

They'd almost reached the twelfth precinct when the car suddenly skidded and sagged, indicating a blown tire. Beckett would have thought that they'd run over a nail (and, of course, blamed Castle for an entirely unavoidable accident) were it not for the sharp gunshot preceding the deflation of the tire. "Castle, stay in the car," she commanded, for once sure that he would listen, if not for the severity of the situation, then simply out of fear for his own life.

She stepped out of the car, sliding her gun out of its holster and surveying the empty alley she had made the mistake to instruct Castle to take a shortcut through. It was so cliché, she reflected, a darkening alley, a shot tire. But she wasn't a defenseless victim, she was a trained cop and she wasn't about to let someone take the car, or whatever it was the shooter wanted. (Silver lining- she could blame Castle if anything did happen.) "NYPD, show yourself!" she called, carefully watching the surrounding area. There were too many shadows and corners, and she cursed herself when she realized that the man with the gun already had Castle out of the car.

She glared at him and could tell that he was nothing sinister, just a guy looking for an easy carjacking who hadn't expected the police. "Put down the gun!" He did, dropping it as he shoved Castle against the pavement, hurdling over him and running around the corner. She sprinted to follow him, temporarily ignoring Castle's whimpers of pain. She chased him as far as she could up the sidewalk before he managed to escape and blend into the mix of taxis and pedestrians. Not for the first time, she reflected how much easier it would be to chase criminals in a wide open field out in the country instead of this tangle of the urban city.

She radioed a description of the would-be robber back to the precinct and felt thankful that he had been so scared and apparently inexperienced. Otherwise, he might have shot Castle.

Castle. He'd hit the ground pretty hard. She jogged back around the corner, expecting to see him standing by the car, perhaps rubbing his head, with some sarcastic remark that he thought was witty. But he wasn't moving.

* * *

Beckett sat in a waiting room chair, uncomfortable by itself but made all the more uncomfortable because she couldn't stop fidgeting. It was ridiculous that she would be so worried; she was trained to be stoic, to stay calm, but every time a doctor walked into the room she was sitting in, she went crazy wondering if he was coming to talk to her, if it was good news or bad news.

Finally, a tall man in a white lab coat stepped into the room and called out her name. "That's me," she said, standing up. The hospital knew who she was because she'd given her name when she'd brought Castle in, but they also had her name because she was listed under Castle's people to call in an emergency, a fact of which she had not been aware until today. The gesture felt oddly touching. She stood up and walked with the doctor to a hall full of hospital rooms and waited outside one of the doors with him.

"We think Mr. Castle is about to wake up and it would be better if you were there when he did," the doctor explained.

"He's going to be okay, right?" she said, annoyed at how frantic she felt.

"He'll be fine," the doctor said. "No concussion. He might have some bad bone bruising, though, and no doubt he'll be disoriented."

"Have you called Martha and Alexis?" she asked, realizing how worried his actual family would be if she was freaking out.

"They're on their way," he assured her, opening the door. He stayed in the doorway while she walked in and sat in the chair beside Castle's cot. It was unnerving how still he looked. He was always moving, impatient and jittery with a child-like excitement. She took his hand, unsure of what else to do. She could feel his pulse, and it helped to calm some of her fears. His eyes blinked open, surprising her.

"Hey," she whispered. He smiled.

"Hey, Nikki."


	2. Chapter 2

Ryan and Esposito were slumped in two adjacent chairs in the waiting room of the psychiatric ward in the hospital where they were holding Castle, trying to ignore the mutterings of a ma beside them who appeared to be arguing with himself over whether he was schizophrenic. "I always knew Castle would end up in the psych ward," stated Ryan.

"Is Beckett still in his room?" complained Esposito. They'd been phoned that there was an emergency, so they'd dropped all the important matters they'd been attending to (a contest to see how far they could snap rubber bands across the bullpen) and rushed off to the hospital only to be kept out of his room while Beckett "dealt with" him. They had been given next to no information and had no idea what the extent of the damage to Castle was.

"Probably professing her undying love for him," joked Ryan. Esposito rolled his eyes.

"Keep saying stuff like that," he shrugged. "I'm winning the bet, Honeymilk." Ryan sighed, the annoying nickname reminding him to check his phone to see if he had missed any texts from Jenny (he hadn't.) Trying to be inconspicuous, he shot her a smiley-faced "I love you" before pocketing his cell phone. Just then, Beckett stepped into the waiting room. She looked a little disoriented herself, as if whatever had gone down in Castle's hospital room had left her unsteady and worried.

As if on cue, Ryan and Esposito leapt up and walked to her. "So?" asked Esposito. She glanced up at him, seemingly distracted.

"Okay," she said. "Okay." They were shocked. Kate Beckett, the unshakeable detective with nerves of steel, was actually flustered. "You guys can go in there, but I should prepare you first."

"For what?" said Ryan, growing worried. After two years of dealing with him, Castle had become like a second partner to him, and the thought that one of his favorite authors might be dying in the hospital was terrifying.

"He… thinks we're all our characters in _Heat Wave_," she said quickly, like ripping off a Band-Aid. There was a long moment of awkward silence, during which Esposito and Ryan stared at her blankly. Esposito was the first to speak, though it wasn't very articulated.

"Um… what?"

"Well, he thinks he's Jameson Rook," she said. "And he keeps calling me Nikki. I haven't mentioned you two, but I'm pretty sure he'll think you're Raley and Ochoa." They were still staring at her, mouths agape.

"That's awesome!" said Esposito, Ryan nodding in agreement.

"It's not awesome, it's brain damage," she chastised them. As she began to grasp the reality of Castle's situation, her panic began to steadily increase. "Oh my God, he's not going to remember Martha and Alexis."

"That's awkward," said Ryan.

"I'll go try to talk to him," she sighed, turning around and returning to the room she had just left. Esposito turned to his partner.

"Twenty bucks says he's faking it to mess with Beckett," he challenged.

"You're on," said Ryan.

o-o-o-o-o

"Hey…" said Beckett, edging towards Castle, who was sitting up in his hospital cot, examining his hand as if he had never seen it before. "Rook." He glanced up, and she shuddered at the pure _weirdness _of the fact that he responded to his assumed identity as if it were a reflex. "Listen, you're not who you think you are."

"So I'm _not _a ruggedly handsome writer that follows you around?" he asked, skeptically, raising an eyebrow. She frowned.

"Well, that part's true," she said to herself. "No, you've had some mental trauma. Your real name is Richard Castle, but you know believe that you are a fictional character from your book _Heat Wave._" He nodded thoughtfully for a moment.

"That _does _sound logical," he murmured.

"Definitely one of Castle's characters," she muttered.

"Look, Heat-" he started, trying to sit up as if to argue with her over his identity. The situation was utterly bizarre, even for Beckett's standards, and if Castle had "become" any other fictional character, she might have just let him be. It would be nice to go a few days listening to John McClane or Sherlock Holmes instead of Castle, but Jameson Rook was basically Richard Castle, only worse: Rook and Nikki had slept together. And now that Castle thought he was Rook, and she was Nikki, there was more than enough room for some serious misunderstandings and uncomfortable situations.

"Stop calling me that!" she snapped. "I'm not Nikki Heat. My name is Kate Beckett." It was, she predicted, not the last time that day she would be suffering major déjà vu. The only bright side was, if he were going to be needing re-introductions, she might be able to mess with him. Not that she would, of course…

"Kate Beckett," he repeated slowly. "That's a nice name. Would you mind if I used you for something I'm writing?"

"You already have!" she exclaimed. She really wasn't looking forward to going through everything again. She felt like she'd spent the past three years teaching him, training him, how to act around her and how to not annoy her, and now he had been suddenly deprogrammed. "I'm going to go talk to your psychiatrist." Beckett opened the door and came face-to-face with Detective Ryan, whose fist was hanging in midair as if he had been about to knock. "What are you doing here?" she demanded.

He glanced down, a little guiltily. "I wanted to meet Jameson Rook." She rolled her eyes, and Castle spotted Ryan standing in the doorway.

"Hey, it's Raley!" he said happily.

"He knows me," said Ryan, smirking at Beckett as he walked past her. She resisted the urge to groan loudly and went back to the waiting room.


	3. Chapter 3

"He's mentally damaged," Beckett explained to her cell phone, pacing across the linoleum floor of the hospital's waiting room. Her heels clicked on the floor, a perfect soundtrack to her irritable mood as she listened to her boss's response. "Well, now he's even _more _mentally damaged."

"Then send him home," instructed the Captain. "I've got a dead body at Washington Irving High and I need somebody over there investigating."

"Ryan and Esposito and I will be over there as soon as we've taken care of Castle," she promised, ignoring the slight increase in her heartbeat and the whirring in her brain, the signs of adrenaline she felt every time she got a call about a murder. It might have been a bit sadistic, but she really did love her job. She wouldn't do it if she wasn't morbidly thrilled about walking into the precinct each morning and setting out to track down the evil in the world. Every time she pulled a killer off the street, she felt like she was "cleaning" the city, making it a percent safer. It was a rewarding feeling, but it didn't make her job a picnic. A dead body was a dead body, a person whose life had abruptly and unfairly ended, and she wasn't about to forget that just because she enjoyed carrying out the justice that followed.

"Ryan and Esposito will be over where?" said Esposito, walking up to her and handing her one of the two Styrofoam cups of lukewarm hospital coffee he carried in his hands.

"Washington Irving," she replied, accepting the coffee. She swigged down half of the tasteless drink in one gulp and slid her cell phone back into her pocket. "A girl died in the middle of her Chemistry class."

"Are we bringing Castle?" he asked.

"You mean Rook," said Ryan, walking up to them. He had also brought an extra cup of coffee for Beckett and ended up glancing awkwardly between the two of them while holding the two white cups.

"Dibs," said Esposito, grabbing Ryan's spare cup of coffee and chugging it.

"Don't get caught up in his identity crisis," Beckett scolded Ryan. "And we're not taking him, as soon as Martha and Alexis get here we'll send him home with them."

"That might be harder than you think," said Ryan, uncharacteristically pessimistic. "He knows them as Margaret and… random redhead girl. Little Castle doesn't really have a character." He pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket and showed it to Beckett and Esposito. "But, on the bright side, I have Jameson Rook's autograph."

"Nerd," said Esposito.

"Let me see that," Beckett said, snatching the paper out of his hand. In large, looping handwriting was the name "Jameson Rook", the leg of the K swirling back to underline it. "He's even signing it," she sighed, half annoyed and half worried.

"I thought he would still be able to sign his signature," said Esposito. "'Cause of the whole 'muscle memory' thing."

"It's because he's thinking," said Ryan. "He knows he's confused, so he's putting too much thought into remembering who he thinks he is. Which he really isn't."

"Castle thinking," said Beckett. "Definitely a bad sign." She ignored Esposito's open-mouthed "How did you understand that?" look and turning to see Martha and Alexis enter the waiting room. They both seemed frazzled, and Alexis looked like she'd been crying.

"Kate," said Martha, finding the three detectives and walking towards them, looking lost.

"He's fine," she assured them quickly. "Sort of." Alexis raised her eyebrows. "Have you two read _Heat Wave_?" Martha stared at her blankly.

"I read both the books," said Alexis, sounding confused but nevertheless eager to be helpful and answer a question. Beckett was taken aback for a moment, realizing that she had essentially read a sex scene between her and the girl's father. Pushing aside her embarrassment, she plowed through to explain Castle's condition.

"Castle hit his head and now he thinks he's Jameson Rook," said Beckett. "And he keeps calling me Nikki Heat."

"That… sounds like a joke," admitted Alexis. "He really thinks he's a fictional character?"

"Apparently," she sighed, pulling her hair back and wishing she had a clip to hold it up. The hospital was thick with humidity, and it was making her hair curl and crowd her neck uncomfortably.

Alexis was often the one to create a break in a case, usually through Castle. She was smart, and her smart decisions in everyday situations sometimes coincidentally reflected the case that Beckett and her team were currently trying to solve. But occasionally, she also helped more directly. Her dad would present her with the problems that were plaguing them at the precinct and she would pick out the important detail, the final key that pulled it all together. Above all, she was adept at critical thinking and problem solving. And this, an identity confusion that deeply involved not only Castle but everyone around him, was a problem if there ever was one.

"You should let him keep following you around," said Alexis. Beckett raised her eyebrows skeptically. In her opinion, the best thing for Castle was rest at home, surrounded by Castle-ness so he might recover himself. "The common denominator between _Heat Wave _and Dad's real life is your detective work," she explained her theory. "Maybe if he keeps following you around, he'll find the connection between Rook and himself and follow it back."

Esposito and Ryan stared at her, impressed that she had gone straight from the news that her dad wouldn't remember her to a possible solution. They were irrepressibly reminded of Beckett.

"That might work," said Beckett slowly, turning around and walking back towards Castle's hospital room. She nudged the door open and peeked in. He was sitting up in his cot, glancing around the room as if he were interested in every tiny detail of it. "Castle?" He didn't respond. "Rook?" He looked up at her inquiringly.

"Yes?"

"Answer to 'Castle' from now on," she said. "For… argument's sake." He nodded, but she could tell that he was still confused. Everyone was confused. "There's been a murder," she informed him. She was reluctant to invite him, but she did want him to tag along, if, like Alexis predicted, police work would bring him back to his senses. Luckily for her, Jameson Rook was similarly annoying to Castle.

"I'll come, too," he grinned, hopping out of the cot. "The nurse came in and told me I was free to go a few minutes ago." She watched him carefully, suspiciously, sure that he was lying. Medical staff didn't just release crazy people into society without medication,did they?

Beckett decided that it was best not knowing whether he was lying or telling the truth. They needed to go to the high school, and if she could pretend that Castle was allowed to leave, that was good enough. "Let's go," she said, and swept out the hospital room door.


	4. Chapter 4

"How do you know it wasn't an anaphylactic reaction?" Beckett asked Perlmutter, looking down at the body of the girl. She was slumped over the lab table, eyes open and staring towards the sink. The paper cup she'd sipped from was lying on its side next to her left hand, marked with an evidence tag.

"You can't be allergic to _water_," he said, shaking his head at her. "Besides, whatever's in that cup _wasn't _water, and it was supposed to be. We'll need to test it, but I'm guessing it was some kind of fast-acting arsenic."

"Well maybe if the girls had been better scientists they would've known that," mused Castle, inspecting one of the strips of litmus paper. Beckett glared at him, silencing him. What she had suspected was indeed true- Jameson Rook was just as annoying at crime scenes as Castle was.

"Go talk to the teacher and her classmates," said Beckett to Ryan and Esposito. "See if you can determine how the experiment was supposed to work and who might have had access to the samples."

"On it," said Ryan, and he followed his partner out the door to the classroom across the hall, where the class had gathered after the girl had collapsed.

"What is her name?" asked Beckett, glancing down at the girl again.

"Andrea Methay," said Perlmutter. "Seventeen. She's a junior here."

"Was a junior here," Castle corrected him. Perlmutter rolled his eyes.

"Okay, let's get her back to lab," said Beckett. "And see if we can find out more about whatever it was she drank."

* * *

Back at the precinct, Beckett stuck a picture of the victim up on the murder board and wrote her name in red Expo marker beneath it, along with a description and the details of the murder. "There's about twenty witnesses, and still… nothing," she said. "I hate poisonings."

"How do we know it wasn't a suicide?" suggested Castle. He was standing beside her, staring at the picture of Andrea. "Poisoning's a popular method." For once, she agreed with him. They hadn't ruled out suicide yet, but something told her that Andrea wouldn't have tried to kill herself with a group of her peers all watching. Unless she was hoping they'd be scarred for life. "Ooh, better!" said Castle. "It was her lab partner! She created a poison with the exact pH properties of water and slipped it into the cup while Andrea was writing her name on the lab sheet."

"She's a Chemistry student, Castle, not a mad scientist." He didn't even look at her, and she wondered if he was even making an effort to answer to his real name.

"Beckett," said Captain Montgomery, walking up to the murder board. "Her family's here." She nodded, walking over to an older couple sitting at the other end of the bullpen.

"Hello, I'm Detective Beckett," she said warmly, shaking Andrea's father's hand and sitting down across from the two.

* * *

"How does she do that?" wondered Castle, watching her from across the room as she conversed quietly with Andrea's parents. Montgomery stared at him oddly.

"Okay, I'm getting a déjà vu," he admitted. "Haven't we had this conversation before?"

He extended his hand, as if they were just meeting (which, in a very weird way, they were.) "Jameson Rook, severe amnesia and possible brain damage."

* * *

"Her sister lives upstate," said Mrs. Methay with teary eyes to Detective Beckett. "We had to tell her over the phone." Kate nodded in sympathy, watching the woman who had lost her daughter that morning contemplate her horrific loss.

"Mr. and Mrs. Methay, I hate to bring this up," she said softly, "but did Andrea have any reason to commit suicide?" They looked shocked, as she'd expected.

"Actually," stuttered Mrs. Methay, "last year she got very reclusive and… she started gaining a lot of weight. I guess she was eating more than usual. I was going to talk to her about it, but then she started getting better." She wiped her eyes. "I figured it was just teenage angst and let her get over it the way she chose. Are you telling me she was suicidal?"

"No," said Beckett quickly. "We just wanted to cover all the bases." Mr. Methay nodded understandingly while his wife dissolved into another bout of tears. "Was there anyone in your daughter's life who might have wanted to kill her? Has anyone threatened her recently?"

"No," said Mr. Methay. "I mean, she's a teenage girl, it's not like we expect her to tell us everything that's going on with her, but we hadn't noticed anything."

"Okay," said Beckett. "And I'm sorry for your loss."

* * *

"How could they not know if their own daughter was being threatened?" Castle ranted on their way down to the morgue. He and Beckett were responding to a call from Lanie (Castle had tried to convince Beckett that she had misspelled "Lauren" in her contacts).

"Some families are distant," she shrugged. "Not everyone is like you and needs to keep an eye on his daughter at all times."

"I have a daughter?" he asked, surprised. She rolled her eyes and brushed past him into the morgue. "Hey, Lanie," she said, walking over to the table where her friend was standing.

"Hello, Lauren," sang Castle following Beckett. Lanie stared at him.

"What?" she asked Beckett.

"He had a slight mental… snafu," she explained in whisper. "Now he basically thinks he's living in _Heat Wave_." She raised her eyebrows but said nothing. "So, did you find something interesting about what killed her?"

"Not what killed her," said Lanie. "But I found something interesting about her." She lifted the sheet covering Andrea's body to show them her lower stomach and pointed to a number of pale lines.

"Stretch marks?" asked Beckett, surprised.

"From what I can tell, she gave birth almost a year ago," said Lanie. "Did the parents mention anything about her being pregnant?"

"They didn't know," she realized, remembering the conversation. Mr. and Mrs. Methay had thought that Andrea was eating too much, but really what they thought was fat was a baby. "How can you keep something like that a secret?"

"I told you the parents should have been more involved," Castle muttered. Beckett rolled her eyes.

"We'll see what we can find out about her pregnancy and whether there's a child involved," said Beckett, walking away from the table.

"Hey, new MTV series," said Castle, following her. "_Sixteen, Pregnant, and Murdered_. "


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Some theme music for this story: "You Don't Know Me" – Ben Folds and "She Thinks She's Edith Head" – They Might Be Giants. **

"So that's Rodgers with a D?" ascertained Castle, glancing over one of a large stack of tabloid magazines at the redheaded teen in front of him. She had met him at the precinct and led him back to a spacious loft that he didn't recognize and announced that she was going to teach him everything there was to know about being Rick Castle. After getting over the fact that she was, apparently, his daughter Alexis, he'd been more than open to going through old magazine articles about himself.

And yet, was it himself? That he had invented an entirely developed and in-depth alternate personality seemed a little odd. How was it possible that he could be so sure that he was Jameson Rook, but everybody told him he wasn't? Where was the proof that it wasn't some enormous prank that Ochoa and Raley were pulling on him?

"Yeah, with a D," Alexis said, skimming through the list of facts she had made earlier that day. "It was Richard Alexander Rodgers, but then when you decided to become a writer you changed it to Richard Edgar Castle."

"Any chance I could change it again to Jameson Rook?" he asked, setting the magazine back on the coffee table. She glared at him.

"Dad, I'm trying to help you," she replied, irritated, slapping an issue of Cosmo on his lap. "I need you to meet me halfway." He sighed and nodded thoughtfully, flipping open the Cosmo to a page with a big picture of Beckett on it, the words "Nikki Heat" emblazoned beneath it. The universe was giving him some serious mixed messages. "I love you. I want to get you back."

"Who is your mother?" he asked suddenly, as if he hadn't been listening to her. She rolled her eyes.

"We'll get to that later," she said. "In your love interests course." That was one of the things that both interested and annoyed Castle about the daughter he didn't know. She organized everything as if she were a teacher designing a curriculum, which in the long run might help him, but at the moment he was bored. Rick Castle sounded like a pretty cool guy to him, but he would have enjoyed learning about the guy- himself- much more if he didn't have to endure schooling in this manner. "And _she_ might pop up in that course," Alexis added, tapping the picture of Beckett.

"I'm bored," he sighed. "Can we do something else?" To his luck, his cell phone rang then. Ignoring her "No cell phones in class" precept, he slid the phone out of his pocket. "Hello, Nikki," he said. Alexis stared at him, her chin in her palm, the portrait of an exhausted professor. "Yes, it _is _completely necessary to call you that." Alexis knew that she had a much higher tolerance for her dad's antics than Detective Beckett did, and so she felt sorry for the woman who had to spend so much time with Castle, but also a little relieved. She'd gotten used to her father in the past seventeen years, but Rook was something else. "Okay. I'll be right there." He hung up and put his phone back in his pocket. "We got our vic's cell phone to figure out if she had a boyfriend," he explained to Alexis. She shrugged, more interested in what was going on with his brain than the case he was working on. "Hey, if you got pregnant when you were sixteen, who would you tell?"

"Wow," she said. "So you really don't know me at all." He frowned apologetically. "If I did- which I never would- I'd probably tell you."

"Who else?" he pressed.

"Hm…" she murmured, contemplating a situation that she had never and would never live through. "I guess… the father, an OBGYN, and probably my best friend."

"Best friend…" he said, latching onto her suggestion. "I'll say something to Nik- Beckett about it."

"By the way," she said as he grabbed his coat, "I'm sure you don't remember, but Rick Ca- _you_ owe me fifty dollars from a bet."

He paused, one hand on his pocket as if he'd been reaching for his wallet, and smiled at her. "You really are my daughter."

She smiled, muttered, "Worth a shot," and stood with her arms crossed as Castle left the apartment.

* * *

Castle dropped into the passenger seat of Beckett's cop car and shut the door. Beckett sat beside him, eyeing the front door of the Washington Irving and tapping her fingers impatiently against the steering wheel. "Why exactly do we need to stake this girl out?" asked Castle. He whispered, afraid that she would snap at him if he spoke any louder.

"I don't want to make a scene, walking into class and dragging her out," she replied calmly. "It's best to keep the rumors at a minimum."

"She was a teen mom who died in class," he said, sounding a little exasperated. "I doubt that there's a cell phone in the school that doesn't have about a dozen texts on the subject." She rolled her eyes but said nothing. As the minutes stretched on, he glanced at the clock, wondering when school would let out.

"How did your talk with Alexis go?" she asked, and he guessed that whatever her train of thought was, she was preoccupied with his identity confusion.

"Okay," he shrugged. "It's _weird_, that apparently I've known her for seventeen years and I don't even recognize her."

"Speaking of which, Ryan and Esposito made you index cards," she said, pointing to the glove compartment. He popped it open and extracted a pack of white cards held together with a red rubber band. "They thought it might help you get back into your own shoes." He nodded and began flipping through the cards.

"I tap dance?" he said, surprised. She stared at him and saw that he was reading notes off one of the cards.

"Those guys," she groaned, snatching the cards away from him and chunking them through the open window into a nearby trashcan.

"People keep taking advantage of me," he complained. "It's not like I…" He stopped, staring blankly off into the distance. Confused, she followed his gaze, but the front of the school remained empty and free of students, as it had been for the past half hour. "Oh, I'm not looking at anything," he said quickly, drawing her eyes away from the open window. "I think I'm having a déjà vu."

"That's good," she said. "I guess." Normally she disapproved of his ramblings about fantasy and magic, things like déjà vu and chiromancy and double rainbows. However, déjà vu after memory loss was probably a sign that he was coming back to his senses… or whatever it was Castle had had prior to his injury. "Do you know what it was about?"

"Something about amnesia…" he said. His brow crinkled as if he were trying to recall a dream. "Falsely accused… because he couldn't remember…" He frowned, clenching his fists in frustration as he tried to bring back his sudden flash of memory. "A gun."

"We worked a case that involved a man with amnesia, Jeremy," she said in a rush, excited that he seemed to be making some progress. "The killer planted the murder weapon in Jeremy's apartment." Castle was staring ahead, the gears in his head cranking. She sensed that he was inches away from a huge leap towards an epiphany about his true identity.

And then the students came pouring out of the school, just like Beckett and Castle had been hoping they would. Trying not to swear, Beckett sighed and scanned the crowd for the girl whose picture Andrea's parents had showed them. She had been Andrea's lab partner on the day of Andrea's death. Castle's almost realization was gone now, and he was in full cop mode. Or rather, fake-cop mode.

Upon recognizing the girl, Beckett hopped out of the car and flashed her badge. "Sarah Mays," she called. The teen glanced upward, pinpointing the person who had called her. Sarah swerved and changed directions, speeding up as she approached the car.

"You found out," she said quietly, sounding scared, when she reached Beckett. She looked a bit lost, sort of frantic, and Beckett reminded herself to speak carefully, gently. Sarah had just watched her best friend die in front of her. "You found out about the kid, didn't you?"

"There's a kid?" Castle asked, leaning forward. Up until that point, there was still the more likely chance that Andrea had miscarried or the baby had died, which would account for the possibility that their case was a suicide. Now that they knew she had actually had a child, he was extremely interested. Where was it? How had she kept her baby a secret from her parents for so many months?

"She didn't want anyone to know," said Sarah, clearly panicking. She looked stressed, afraid, as if this secret had been extremely difficult to keep for such a long time. "I mean… it was a scandal."

"What was a scandal?" asked Beckett, leaning in. Sarah gulped and bit her lip, contemplating whether she should betray her now dead friend's trust to help solve her murder.

"He was Mr. Grainger's son," she whispered.

"Mr. Grainger?" said Castle, looking up at Beckett. "You mean her _married, Chemistry _teacher?"


	6. Chapter 6

Beckett leaned across the table in the interrogation room, feeling the edge of it press into her stomach as she pulled herself closer to Grainger. There was a shiny film of sweat coating his forehead, and his eyes kept darting away from her. Castle was sitting beside her, his eyes going between her and Grainger like he was at a tennis match. He'd been silent so far, and she was thankful for that. At the moment, Jameson Rook seemed less inclined to impede than Castle usually did.

"Why didn't you tell us about your relationship with Andrea Methay?" Beckett asked, eyes boring into the man in front of her.

"I didn't want to lose my job," he said, staring at his interlaced fingers. He seemed extremely nervous to her, and it was for that reason that she didn't really think he was their killer. Poisoning took planning and preparation, and premeditated murder tended to require "nerves of steel", a trait that Grainger in no way possessed. She guessed that most of his anxiety at the moment was stemming from the fact that the truth about his affair had spilled out. "I don't see why this is important, anyway. It's my personal business."

"Mr. Grainger, you are facing a murder charge," said Beckett icily, trying to maintain eye contact with him despite his shifting line of sight. "You had access to the samples that she would drink, and you have an easy explanation as to why we found your fingerprints on the cup. You had motive, opportunity, and I'm sure we would find plenty of poisonous substances in your possession."

"I'm a Chemistry teacher!" he spluttered. "Of course I have chemicals that can kill you, everyone does! How many people do you think keep bleach in their houses?" He was getting defensive, a sure sign that he had something to hide, and yet…

"Where's the kid?" she asked. He glanced up, meeting her gaze.

"The what?" he asked. She watched him carefully, searching for signs that his surprise was just an act, but he looked genuinely confused.

"Andrea got pregnant," she said, "about a year and a half ago. Right around the time that you were having your affair with her." His mouth dropped open. "So where's your son?"

"I don't know!" he insisted. "I had no idea, I didn't even know she was pregnant!" Beckett sighed internally, sure that he was telling the truth. It was early in the case, though, and he was only their first suspect. She just wished they'd gotten closer to finding the son. She made a mental note to ask Sarah if she knew, and wondered why she hadn't thought to do that earlier.

"Where were you last night between eight o'clock and midnight?" she asked, addressing the block of time that Lanie had estimated the water had been contaminated.

"I went home around seven, after dinner with my wife," he said. "I didn't leave the apartment until the next morning. You can ask her, or the doorman probably saw us."

* * *

"Check with his wife and doorman about his alibi," said Beckett to Ryan and Esposito after Grainger was gone. "But I'm not getting a strong killer-vibe from him." Ryan and Esposito shared an amused glance between each other, then looked back at her.

"So… now you can sense _vibes_?" asked Ryan, an eyebrow raised. She glared at him for a moment.

"Just see if his alibi checks out."

"On it." Esposito grabbed his jacket and slipped into it while he was standing up. He and Ryan walked out of the precinct, leaving her standing there in front of the murder board. She was in the middle of adding the fact that the baby's father didn't know about Andrea's pregnancy to the whiteboard in red Expo marker when Castle walked up with two espressos in ceramic white mugs. She took one gratefully and sipped it while she stared at the board.

"So what's our next move?" he asked, leaning against her desk.

"We need to talk to her friend Sarah," said Beckett, reaching for her coat.

"But I just made coffee," he said, gesturing to the steaming cup in his hand. She frowned at him.

"Then maybe you should just hang back and finish your coffee," she said dryly, walking towards the elevator. She was counting down in her head from five, waiting for him to start following. At three, she heard his footsteps behind her.

"Wait!" he said. She smirked. "Nikki!"

Resisting the urge to groan, Beckett spun around to face him, her expression clearly not amused. "Stop calling me that," she said. "It's Beckett."

"Right, Kathy," he said.

"Kate!"

"I know!" Castle's shoulders sunk in frustration as she waiting with her finger on the elevator call button. "I do. It's all starting to rush back to me. Let's go talk to Sarah."

"Are you really remembering who you are?" she said skeptically. "Because I'm getting this feeling that you don't really care, that you'd rather blow everything off and keep being Jameson Rook because he doesn't have any responsibilities and nothing bad happens to him."

"Bad things happen to me," he said defensively.

"You're not Jameson Rook!" she sputtered. "If you can't get that into your thick skull-"

"I can," he promised, "get it into my thick skull. I'm serious, things are starting to come back to me. I know who Alexis is." She folded her arms, watching him. "I'm remembering a lot."

"Really?" she said, still skeptic. "Name three of your books that aren't in the Nikki Heat series."

"Okay, you can give me a harder challenge than that," he replied, but she sensed he was just bluffing.

"Name three books in the Derrick Storm series," she revised, trying not to grin menacingly at him. As it was, she was both gleeful at getting the upper hand and upset that he was being so resistant at getting back to his real life.

"Storm Fall," he said, his uncertain voice matching his unsure expression. "Storm Wave… Naked Storm?" She groaned, for real this time, and jabbed the elevator's down button.

"Come on," she sighed, stepping into the car when it arrived.


	7. Chapter 7

It took quite a bit of persuading and badge-flashing for Beckett and Castle to get through Sarah Wells' overbearing parents, but somehow they did it. After being let into the house, Detective Beckett requested that they invite Sarah into the kitchen so they could all sit around the table and talk. Mr. Wells grumbled something that they couldn't make out and sent his wife to fetch their daughter before leading the writer and the detective into the kitchen.

The apartment was spacious, thought Castle, but messy. Maybe it was that, the extra space, that made room for more clutter. There were teetering piles of DVDs on the shelves and floors, jackets and bags strewn over the couch, and barely any counter space in the fluorescently lit kitchen, what with the books and dishes and boxes stacked across the surface. He slid one of the wooden chairs out from under the table, took the bulky pair of headphones from the seat and set them atop a Jenga box sitting on the counter, and sat down.

"Detective," said Sarah as she entered the kitchen. She sounded a bit startled, having not expected them to come to her home.

"Hello again, Sarah," Beckett greeted her as the girl took the seat across from Beckett. Mr. Wells remained leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen, overseeing all. "I wanted to ask you some questions about Andrea's baby."

"That girl had a baby?" Sarah's dad spoke up.

"Mr. Wells," said Beckett, her irritation clear on her face, "please let me continue my investigation. You can question your daughter about it later." He looked affronted, but all he did was huff silently and take a step away from the kitchen. Beckett pursed her lips and turned to face Sarah. "Are you certain that Hank Grainger is the child's father?"

"That's what Andrea said," she shrugged. "She said he was the only one she'd ever… you know. The only one who _could _be the father."

"Where was Andrea keeping the baby?" Beckett asked. "She was trying to keep it a secret from her parents, she wouldn't have had it at home."

"She told me she gave him to her sister Kristen," said Sarah. "She lives up in Scarsdale. Told her parents that she'd adopted the kid." Beckett wrote the sister's name and the city in her notebook, planning a blood test and DNA test to ascertain whether Grainger was the father of Andrea's baby. If he was the father, then there was motive right there, to keep Andrea quiet about the affair and the baby. Ryan and Esposito had called earlier to let her know that Grainger's alibi had checked out, though, so he probably wasn't the killer. Of course, when it came to a poisoning, it was difficult to pinpoint when exactly the killer had set up the poison. Alibis didn't matter so much, but motive was good. She was beginning to rethink her earlier decision that Hank Grainger wasn't behind Andrea's murder.

"Thank-you, Sarah," she said, snapping her notebook shut and standing up. "And I'm sorry for your loss. It's hard, losing a friend." Sarah bit her lip and nodded. Castle, who'd remained silent from the point they'd entered the house, stood and followed Beckett out the door, leaving Mr. and Mrs. Walls to stand in their living room looking very pleased that the writer-detective team was going.

"First guy she ever sleeps with, she gets pregnant and then dies," reflected Castle as they got into Beckett's car. "Talk about a commercial for abstinence."

"Castle!" she snapped, turning the key in the ignition. She was glad that at least he had waited until they were out of Sarah's earshot to make his insensitive comment.

"So what's our next move?" he said. "Scarsdale?"

"Yup," she said as the car lurched forward into the night.

* * *

Kristen Methay had a small apartment above a busy street. Her eyes were rimmed with red as she answered the door, and Beckett felt a pang of sympathy for the woman who had lost her sister. She didn't show it, though. Remaining professional, she flipped out her NYPD badge and introduced herself as the head detective on her sister's case. "Is Andrea's son here?" she asked, skipping to the point in a way that Castle found impressive.

"H-he's sleeping," she hiccupped. Her voice was soft. She led them to a small room to the right of the door, where a small boy lay nestled in a blue and white wooden crib. His head was illuminated in the pale green glow of the baby monitor above him. He had curly blond hair, like Andrea. "Am I allowed to ask… that you not tell Mom and Dad about Henry?" said Kristen. "An- Andrea made herself crazy trying to keep him a secret." Her eyes flicked back and forth between Beckett and Castle, horror seeping into her expression. "Or… you're not going to take him away, are you?" she gasped.

"No, no," said Beckett quickly in an attempt to calm her. "We aren't going to take your nephew away from you. We just want to ask you some questions about your sister and Henry, and if the warrant comes through we'll need a saliva and blood sample of your nephew's." She nodded, and Beckett could see her swallowing a sob that had been building up.

"I can do that," she said quietly.

"Alright," Beckett nodded. "I think we should sit down." Kristen led them to the kitchen table and invited them to sit. She offered them cider, but they both declined (Castle only after a glare across the table from Beckett). "So Kristen," said Beckett when they were all seated, "when did Andrea tell you she was pregnant?"

"It was right before Thanksgiving," said Kristen. "I'd noticed her getting bigger over the summer, but like Mom and Dad I figured it was just… that she was just…" She sniffled and mumbled something incoherent. "Fat," Castle mouthed towards Beckett while Kristen cried. "And then, she convinced them to let her stay with me over Thanksgiving break. She had the baby up here, and got me to take it. She visited. She drives- drove- up here every weekend." Beckett nodded and jotted it down in her notebook.

From the other room, Henry started crying. "Excuse me," said Kristen, standing up and walking across the room. Beckett sighed and stared across the table at Castle. He could see both pity and exasperation in her eyes, and also guilt that she had the nerve to be exasperated.

"It'll be okay," he promised, patting her hand. She smiled, then snatched her hand back as Kristen returned to the table.

* * *

As soon as Rick walked through the door of his apartment, Alexis fired off a pop quiz to him. She didn't even look up from the homework she had laying on the counter. "Quick, Dad, what college did you go to?"He groaned- she'd been doing this at dinner last night, trying to surprise him into remembering random trivia about himself. He had hoped that when you got amnesia, everything eventually just flooded back. According to Alexis, he needed to learn everything about himself again, and fast. She was a strict teacher.

"I don't know," he sighed. "What are you studying?" He leaned on the counter, plucking a green apple from a basket nearby and taking a bite out of it.

"Rivers of the world," she said, tapping the map in front of her. It was a map of the world, full of squiggles that he supposed were the rivers and labels in Alexis' precise handwriting.

"See how you like it when you get a pop quiz," he grumbled, snatching the paper away from her and hiding the rivers with his hand. "Name three rivers that aren't in America."

"That's not fair, I just started studying!"

"It's a pop quiz," he shrugged, crunching as he took another bite of his apple. She crossed her arms in irritation.

"Well, there's the Nile River, in Egypt," she said, "and the Amazon River in South America." He nodded, encouraging her to go on. She grimaced, trying to think of a third one, and hating his glee that he'd managed to stump her. "And the River Tam, up in space."

"Study," he commanded, trying to hide his amusement and be a responsible father.

"Now you've used up all my study time," she complained. "I'm supposed to meet Ashley for a date in a few minutes."

"Ashley?" said Castle. "Ashley is a girl's name."

"Ashley's not a girl," she said, yanking on her battered Converse sneakers and grabbing her sweater off the back of the couch. "I'll be back around nine!" she called, shutting the door. He looked down and saw a note from Martha, addressed to "Jamie" (at least somebody was accepting his damaged mentality) informing him that she'd be out late at an audition.

Castle munched on his apple, making his way through the family room to the couch when suddenly something collided with the window. He jumped back, his half-eaten apple flying across the room. The windowpane shattered and a figure in black from head to toe soared to the carpet, landing in a hunched pose. He didn't make a sound.

"Who the hell are you?" yelled Castle. The person stepped back, apparently surprised that Castle was standing there. Then, without a word, he swung back out the window and escaped into the night, leaving Castle standing in the middle of his living room and wondering if the doctor had been wrong about his not having a concussion.

* * *

**A/N: Don't want to brag, but I feel like this chapter is everything you need in a fanfiction: A Firefly reference and an unexplained ninja. (Actually, there are two Firefly references, if you're open-minded.)**


	8. Chapter 8

Kate was sitting at her desk the next morning, typing up her request for a search warrant when Castle walked up to her with a cardboard cup of coffee in each hand. He looked perturbed as he set one cup down beside her and sank into the chair next to her desk. She watched, baffled, as his eyes shifted around the room nervously. "Amnesia-induced paranoia setting in, Mr. Rook?" she asked. He glanced towards her.

"It's not paranoia if someone's really after you," he quoted. She was caught between relief that he seemed to be remembering something she, not Nikki, had said, and worry over the fact that he was apparently in danger.

"What happened?" asked Beckett.

"A ninja broke into my house!" he exclaimed. "He jumped through my window, and he saw me, and then he ran back out." Beckett watched him in stunned silence, half-waiting for some kind of punch line. When all he did was stare forward in fear, she rolled her eyes.

"Sounds like one… crazy adventure," she said, trying not to laugh. She slid a folder of papers towards him. "Well, after that heroic scared-off-a-ninja thing, maybe you should wind down by looking over Andrea's financial records." He grimaced a bit at her lack of concern over the ninja issue, but shrugged and opened up the folder.

"What teenager has financial records?" he wondered out loud as he perused the file. "What's she going to buy? Gum? Girl Scout cookies? Oh look, Naked Heat. At least she had good taste in books." Beckett rolled her eyes again and resumed typing.

"Her parents gave her several credit cards," she stated without looking up from the monitor. "I'm guessing there's an obstetrician in there somewhere, and I'd like to track him or her down by noon."

"Sounds like a plan," he agreed. "So long as we don't get attacked by ninjas." She ignored his comment, and he continued to read.

* * *

Castle and Beckett would have gone immediately to the OBGYN office as soon as they found it in Andrea's file, but they were held back when a call came from Lanie. She'd run the blood samples for Henry, Hank Grainger, and Andrea (DNA tests were still pending). She wanted to talk to them, so Beckett sent Ryan and Esposito out to speak with Andrea's obstetrician.

"You know, this place is right near my neighborhood," said Ryan as they drove through the city towards the doctor's office. "Maybe I should pick up a business card." Esposito gave him a questioning and exasperated glare.

"Why?" he said, returning his eyes to the road. "You pregnant?"

"Hilarious," said Ryan drily. "Jenny and I are getting married soon, and we want kids right away. I'm starting to think I should start planning ahead." His partner groaned and muttered something incomprehensible under his breath, likely an insult.

"Bro, you prepare too much," he sighed.

"No I don't," said Ryan defensively. "Turn here." Esposito rounded the corner.

"You totally prepare too much," he continued. "Makes you really boring. Only good it'll do you is if a tornado ever comes through here and we're all trapped in our apartments."

"I will have canned goods," he murmured. Esposito laughed lightly as he parked the car beside the sidewalk in front of the clinic. They got out and walked the couple of steps into the office. The door was coated in pale green peeling paint, the words "Gregory Health Center" emblazoned on the window. The floor was cracked linoleum in various shades of faded gray. Ryan had to blink a few times for his eyes to adjust to the sudden dimness.

The two detectives stepped up to the single wooden desk in the otherwise empty room, where a young man sat sorting through papers. Ryan pulled out his badge. "Hello, I'm Detective Ryan, can we speak to Dr. Gregory?"

"This about Andrea?" he asked, looking back and forth between Ryan and Esposito.

"Guess word's gettin' around," muttered Esposito. Ryan nodded subtly and turned back to the receptionist. In his normal tone, he said to the man, "That's a confidential matter."

"Sit over there for a sec," he said, jerking his thumb toward a row of dilapidated chairs they hadn't yet noticed on the other side of the room. "Doc'll be out here in a couple minutes."

"Thank-you," said Ryan, "but we can stand." The man at the desk nodded slowly and looked away from them, shuffling his papers. Esposito surveyed the room, taking note of the security camera in a corner of the ceiling and the door to the left of the desk, which he assumed led to the rest of the facility. "Bro," muttered Ryan, nudging his partner. Esposito turned to see him pointing to the file that the man at the desk was nonchalantly extracting and slipping under his arm. The name "Andrea Methay" was typed up in black block letters on a white sticker at the top of the manila folder.

"Sir," Esposito started, leaning forward, but the receptionist was on his feet in a second. He kicked the rolling chair out in front of the desk, tripping up the two cops for a second and giving him a head start out the door. Without a word, Esposito and Ryan lunged out of the dingy doctor's office and down the sidewalk in pursuit of the man with the file.

* * *

"No," said Beckett to Castle as they came up from the morgue and into the bullpen. "Let it go, Castle." She marched across the warped wooden floor towards Interrogation Room 2, where Ryan and Esposito were waiting.

"It's highly plausible," he argued, walking past her to the observation booth and turning around to face her.

"The Yakuza is not after you!" she snapped, and brushed him off, ready to be done with the whole matter. Beckett turned to face Ryan and Esposito. "So, you caught the OBGYN's receptionist making off with Andrea's file?"

"Yup," said Ryan, a light grin at the edges of his lips. He and Esposito shared a pointed look that made Beckett feel very much as though she were being left out of a private joke.

"He's waiting for you," said Esposito, visibly resisting cracking up.

"Let me guess," she sighed. "Miley Cyrus is in town?" They shook their heads at her in synchronization (which, honestly, freaked her out a bit.)

"Your guy's a compulsive liar," said Esposito with a smirk. Castle grinned and snickered, making Beckett feel isolated. Nobody was on her side now.

"Nice," said Castle as he and Ryan did a "feed the birds".

"He's… he's really…" Beckett actually found herself flustered, lost for words at the possibility that it might actually be literally impossible to break the suspect.

"Medically diagnosed and everything," said Esposito, handing her a file that contained the receptionist's criminal, medical, and psychiatric records.

"Good luck," said Ryan as she put her hand on the door to the interrogation room.

"Don't need luck," she said in a false attempt at bravado, her weak smile betraying the utter pessimism she felt about persuading a man with a condition that made him a liar to tell the truth. "Come on, Castle-Rook." He nodded, following her in like a puppy at her heels.


	9. Chapter 9

"So…" said Beckett, slowly sliding into the seat across the table from the nervous man as Castle took his spot leaning against the wall behind her. She drew out the word, hoping to sound intimidating, but really she was just trying to postpone addressing him. She had almost no idea how to handle the situation. "Mr. Gordon Briars."

"That's not my name," he said immediately. She couldn't say she hadn't expected it. "I'm, uh… Tommy. Tommy Lo- I mean, Tommy Kennedy."

"Mr. Gordon Briars," she said again.

"It's Alexi Romanov, actually," he corrected her. She ignored Castle's stifled laugh behind her. Gordon's eyes flicked from side to side, and she decided to give up the niceties and do her job the way she would were it any other sane person sitting in front of her.

"Mr. Briars, I'm conducting a murder investigation, and I need you to tell me the truth," she said, her voice icy calm the way it got when she was articulate with a suspect. "Why did you try to steal Andrea's file?"

"She's an alien," he said, the ridiculous lie rolling right off his tongue. "Says so in her file. She came here from Jupi- from Mars, and this whole human thing's just a-"

"Why did you steal her file?"

"CIA conspiracy."

"Why did you steal her file?" Beckett pursed her lips, deliberately ignoring the muffled sounds of Ryan and Esposito cackling behind the glass. She didn't even bother glancing back at Castle to see his reaction- she was certain that he was excited, convinced that there really was a CIA conspiracy mixed into their case.

"Well, it all started a week ago. Andrea and I were walking down the railroad tracks, and we saw this streak of lightning zip across the sky. Next thing we know, we're transported twenty-five years back into the past and barreling through zombies in a green VW bus with tinted-"

"Stop lying!" she snapped, immediately cursing herself for slipping away from her composure and control. Briars got under her skin even worse than Castle ever had, even now with the multiple personality disorder or amnesia or whatever it was he had going on. She was beginning to think that she preferred it when her suspects were unwilling to give up anything.

"I have a condition," he said, sounding irritated. As if he were the one whose time was being wasted in the most exasperating way possible. "It isolates me. Tore our family apart. That, and the fact that I strangled my brother with a garden hose so he wouldn't-"

"I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say that this garden hose story is a lie," interrupted Castle. Beckett resisted turning around to glare at Castle. It would be unprofessional- and besides, she was actually a little grateful that he'd kept Briars from going any farther.

"Mr. Briars," said Beckett, surprised and pleased that she managed to remain calm, "if you cannot tell me the truth about why you tried to steal Andrea Methay's file, we are going to detain you in lock-up." Hopefully, that threat still worked on compulsive liar maniac people.

"I went to lock-up once," he said thoughtfully. She suppressed a groan. "I'd been arrested for flying over the Empire State Building to save a woman being held by a giant ape."

"You're not leaving," she said, standing up. "Not until you get over this and admit why you were really taking that file. You can just sit in here until you decide what the truth is." Castle was fixated on the suspect. She grabbed his arm and pulled him out the door. She'd almost closed it when Gordon Briars spoke up.

"Wait!" She popped her head in the doorway to listen to what he had to say, on the off chance that it was truthful. "I took Andrea's file because she asked me to."

"When was this?" said Beckett skeptically.

"Right before your boys showed up," he said, growing more enthusiastic. "Yeah, she called my cell and told me to bring the file to her house."

"Nice story," she sighed. "So apparently Andrea's a zombie." She slammed the door so she didn't have to hear his shouted, "She is!"

* * *

"I love this guy," said Castle at the espresso machine. She had already downed a cup of coffee in two gulps, and she was putting the mug back under the dispenser.

"For the murder?" she asked, leading him out of the break room to her desk.

"Just love him," he shrugged. "Bet you he's right about the CIA conspiracy."

"Yeah, I'd take that bet," she murmured, pulling up her e-mail. "I hate this," she sighed. "We're never going to get any information from him, it'll just pull us into a web of lies. We could find a bottle of arsenic and a signed confession in his apartment, he'd still never own up to the murder."

"So what now?" asked Castle. She sighed.

"Until he tells us the real reason he tried to steal the file- which will never happen- we're at a dead end." She tapped her fingers against the desk, irritated. Kate Beckett detested dead ends, and sitting still while a murderer roamed the streets made her feel itchy. "I guess we could go over the rest of her financials and see if anything sticks out."

"Sure," he said, sliding the thick stack of papers towards him.

* * *

Later that night, Briars was still fibbing like Pinocchio (or perhaps more accurately, like Tommy the Liar from Saturday Night Live), and Beckett was sitting with Castle in his apartment, reviewing their case. She'd actually worried about him when he left to go home that day, about whether he'd be disoriented. When he asked her to stay with him until his mother and daughter returned home (he was still extremely paranoid and terrified of returning ninjas), she felt she had to say yes.

He was the one who'd suggested going over the case, but as it turned out (and it usually did), she was doing all the work while he goofed off. At the moment, they were sitting on the couch, she with their notes spread out on her lap, he holding the remote. He was focusing more on the Science Channel than the case, though.

"Hey, you want something to drink?" he asked.

"Uh… yes, please," she said, glancing up from Lanie's report. "Water." He stood up and sauntered into the small kitchen. She was rereading the report and didn't notice him reach up into the cabinet above his refrigerator.

"Oh, we're out of water," he sighed theatrically. "All I have right now is this half-empty bottle of tequila." She rolled her eyes. "Or maybe it's half-full."

"I'm not Nikki Heat," she repeated. "I think you know that and you're just trying to annoy me." He sighed, grabbed a water bottle, and sat back down on the couch.

"Sorry," he said, handing her the bottle. She half-smiled in thanks. "It's just… I get confused." She nodded sympathetically and patted his arm, feeling a bit awkward.

"I'm really sorry this happened to you," she said. She wasn't looking at him- her eyes were still fixed on the television, but the images there were a blur to her. "It's my fault and-"

"It's not your fault," he scoffed, rotating so he could look her in the eyes. "It was that would-be carjackhole's fault. In fact, if you weren't there I probably would've been a lot worse off." Beckett smiled at him and sipped her water as her cell phone vibrated. Pulling it out, she saw a text from her boyfriend.

"It's Josh," she sighed. "He's wondering where I am."

"Yeah, you should probably get going," he said. He sounded tired, but she could detect the hint of disappointment in his voice and she immediately felt bad about walking out on him.

"Listen, Castle-"

"Alright, I know it's too much to ask, but could you stay?" he asked abruptly. She blinked.

"Stay?"

He stared down at his hands when he spoke, as if he were ashamed. "It's just… I'm a little worried that the ninja might come back, and you have a gun. But also… you and Nikki are more real to me than my mother and daughter are right now. It might help me sleep better if I knew there was someone else here. Someone who could calm me down if I start acting all Jack Torrance." She stared at him blankly. "You know, from _The Shining_?"

"That's how you're convincing me to stay?" said Beckett. "Admitting that you might kill me with an ax?" He shrugged. She was flipping her phone over repeatedly in her hand, considering texting Josh to let him know that she was staying at a friend's for the night.

"You can have my bed," he promised. "I'll sleep on the couch. I'd just feel a lot safer if you were here." She nodded thoughtfully.

"Okay," she said. "Of course, if you're that concerned I could always just call in a patrol for your apartment." Castle shook his head.

"I'd never live that down," he predicted. She knew he was right.

"Fine, I'll stay." She slid open her phone to text Josh.

"Great," he smiled. "I'll get the tequila." She turned around to either contradict him or smack him, but he was already walking away.

* * *

The next morning, Beckett's eyes snapped open to see Castle's face looming above hers. She jolted upright in shock, her forehead colliding with his. "Ow!" he hissed, clutching his head. _Like it hadn't already gotten enough damage. _

"What the hell are you doing?" she asked, rubbing her own forehead and clutching his thick comforter around herself. Glancing at the clock, she noticed that it was four in the morning.

"I just realized something," he said, far too excited and alert for anyone at four AM.

"People don't like other people watching them in their sleep?" she suggested.

"About Andrea," he continued. "You said her parents paid for her credit cards."

"Yeah," nodded Beckett.

"Which means…"

"…that they would have known about the obstetrician bills!" she finished.


	10. Chapter 10

Ryan and Esposito were waiting to ambush Castle and Beckett the second they stepped off the precinct elevator. "Hey, guys, sorry I'm a little late," said Beckett, striding into the bullpen. They just smirked and glanced at each other like they were sharing some private joke.

"It's okay," said Ryan. "Castle texted us. While he was coming to the precinct with you, from his apartment." She saw Castle shrugging apologetically in her peripheral vision and rolled her eyes.

"So," said Esposito, "something you'd like to tell us?"

"Don't you guys have work to do?" she huffed, hand on her hip. Late as she was, the precinct was still pretty empty. A few detectives filtered in, and Captain Montgomery was just sitting down at his desk for the morning.

"No, not really," Ryan shrugged.

"Although, I really should be planning my wedding," said Esposito, stepping around Beckett towards the elevator.

"Yeah, and I'm supposed to be making out with the ME," added Ryan, turning to the door down to the morgue.

"Wait a minute," said Esposito.

"Right." They switched paths and walked away, leaving Beckett shaking her head in their wake. Their teasing and silly games were beginning to grate on her nerves, especially now that she felt she needed to take care of the recently-insane Castle.

"The parents," he said, reminding her of the realization they'd had earlier that morning.

"The parents!" She took his arm and pulled him back onto the elevator. She had a few pressing questions for Mr. and Mrs. Methay.

* * *

Andrea's parents knew immediately why Beckett and Castle had shown up at their apartment. As soon as Mrs. Methay opened the door and saw them, her smile of greeting dropped and she called for her husband.

"We realized what was going on as soon as we got her credit card bills in the mail," Mrs. Methay admitted a few minutes later when they were all seated around the Methays' kitchen table. The kitchen was gleaming, the surface of the table so glossy that Castle could see his reflection in it.

"Then why didn't you confront her about it?" demanded Beckett, leaning forward. She tapped her pen insistently against her open notepad.

"She wanted to keep it a secret, and so did we," said Mr. Methay. "Do you even realize how embarrassing a child out of wedlock would be, in the circles we run in? We figured, aside from the credit card thing, she was doing a decent job of keeping it under wraps." He paused while Beckett jotted something down. "She wasn't an idiot, Detective. It's not like she Tweeted her secret or anything. And when Kristen announced that she'd adopted a boy, we decided to go along with it."

"But you were still worried that the truth about Andrea's baby would get out," said Beckett. She'd slipped into her accusation cadence, well-recognized by Castle. "As long as she was alive, she was liable to tell someone and ruin your carefully constructed reputation."

"Detective Beckett, are you insinuating that I murdered my own daughter over a matter as trivial as _reputation_?" he hissed in response.

"Depends, do you have an alibi for the night the poison was slipped into her Chemistry sample?" she asked. He gulped, and Kate felt a twinge realizing that she was accusing a man who had just lost his beloved daughter. It shifted her to believe he was truly innocent, but she had to cover all the bases.

"My wife and I were here, at home," he said. He knew that it wasn't solid proof, so he added, "We watched some TV before we went to bed. It was uh… _How I Met Your Mother_ rerun. One of the ones with Britney Spears. That was eleven, I think." Beckett nodded and made a note. She suspected that, unless this man was an exceptional actor, he wasn't the killer.

"I still don't understand why you didn't talk to Andrea once you found out she was pregnant," said Beckett. "She had to be going through a lot of panic and stress about it, how could you just let her go through that alone?"

"She thought it was her secret," sighed Mrs. Methay. "In her mind, she was doing a good job of keeping it from us. So, we went along with it. We pretended. Sometimes you just need to pretend."

Beckett glanced at Castle. "More than you think."

* * *

"It was the TV show!" said Castle once they were in the hall, walking towards the elevator. "_How I Met Your Mother_. Neil Patrick Harris, one of the stars of that show, triggered something in Andrea's dad. He, not aware of what he was doing, crept out of his apartment, across town to the high school, broke in and poisoned the Chemistry sample. Then, he went home and back to sleep, having no idea that he'd just set up his daughter's murder."

"Really, that's your theory?" said Beckett as the elevator pinged and the doors slid open. "Subliminal messages from Dr. Horrible?"

Castle followed her into the elevator, grinning in glee at her reference.

* * *

Beckett and Castle returned to the precinct to the news that Ryan and Esposito had broken Gordon Briars, the compulsive liar. Evidently, Andrea had paid him several hundred dollars to keep her presence at the obstetrician's a secret. "Please never tell me how you got him to talk," she said to Esposito as she added the Methays' alibi to the whiteboard.

Just then, Captain Montgomery walked up to the four at the murder board. "Beckett," he said, "Hank Grainger's wife was just attacked in her home." She turned to look at his picture on the murder board- Andrea's Chemistry teacher, and the father of her child.

"Someone's trying to eliminate the people who had a relationship with Grainger," she realized, looking around at her team. "Let's go."


	11. Chapter 11

The Graingers' apartment was trashed. After Beckett and Castle watched the paramedics load Mrs. Grainger into an ambulance and drive away, they went upstairs to observe the damage. Ryan and Esposito were kneeling in front of the kitchen sink, where shards of the broken window over the sink were scattered. There were smears of Mrs. Grainger's blood on the wall behind them and broken dishes carpeting the floor.

"Hank Grainger said he was in the bathroom washing his hands when he heard the window break," said Esposito, straightening up and facing Beckett. "He ran in here and saw someone all in black wearing a ski mask hitting his wife with a wrench." He pointed to a rusty monkey wrench lying on the kitchen floor amongst the shattered dishes and window glass.

"Assailant probably wore gloves, but we should test it for prints anyway," said Beckett, surveying the rest of the room. "What happened after he walked in and saw the attack?"

"Attacker jumped back out the window," said Ryan, also standing up. "Probably ran down the fire escape. Grainger said he wanted to chase the guy but he was more concerned with his unconscious wife."

"The person who attacked her was wearing all black?" said Castle, obviously disturbed. "Like a ninja?"

"Not a ninja," said Beckett. "There might not have even been an intruder."

"You think her husband did this?" asked Ryan. The thought had been on his and Esposito's minds, but because his alibi had already checked for Andrea's murder, they'd dismissed it. Sure, an attack from a mysterious masked intruder was unlikely, but not impossible.

"He was cheating on her," said Beckett. "So what if she found out, they argued, and it eventually turned to violence?" She was doing what she always did when solving a case, spinning a story. It amused the guys that she always chastised Castle for making up stories about how someone was murdered, not realizing that she did it all the time. Her stories just happened to have more hard evidence and less organ-stealing prostitutes than Castle's.

"Yeah, but where'd he get the wrench?" pointed out Esposito.

"Maybe he was in the middle of trying to fix a leaky faucet," she said, eyeing the gleaming spigot over the sink. "Canvass the area anyway, on the off chance that our attacker ripped off his mask as soon as he was clear of the area." With twin nods, Ryan and Esposito left the apartment.

"But if it was the husband, how do we find out for sure?" asked Castle.

"We interrogate him," she said, resisting the strange urge to add "Duh!" "Honestly, I know your head is a little messed up right now, but you know that much."

"Yeah," he said sarcastically, "we ask him if he attacked his wife and he'll just give us the straight answer. He's already lying." Beckett frowned, recognizing the truth in his words. "We have to lawyer him!"

"What?"

"We ask him a bunch of questions and try to find a flaw in his story," he explained. "Like Encyclopedia Brown." She rolled her eyes, but nevertheless agreed with his idea.

"He's at the hospital with his wife," said Beckett.

"Maybe we could stop at the psychiatric ward on our way to talk to him," said Castle, following her out the door. "I could say hi to all my old friends. Max Hopper, George Drew, Mackenzie Green- of course, they were all the same person…"

* * *

Beckett stepped into Cindy Grainger's hospital room just as the injured woman's eyelids were beginning to flicker. Mr. Grainger, who was sitting beside her cot and clutching her hand, turned around to glare at Beckett as Castle walked up behind her. "She's waking up," he hissed, his gaze returning to his wife's face.

He seemed extremely worried about his wife's well-being, which caused Beckett to retract her theory a centimeter. Mrs. Grainger opened her eyes, and they rotated to focus on her husband. "Hank," she breathed, her grasp on his hand tightening.

"I'm here," he said softly, leaning over her. Beckett felt Castle shift nervously behind her, apparently feeling awkward about intruding on the scene in front of them.

"So brave," said Cindy admirably. "Chased him off, saved my life." Kate frowned. Unless Cindy Grainger's brain was seriously scrambled, hers and Castle's "Hank Grainger Attacking His Wife" story was looking pretty far from the truth. "Thank-you."

Hank gulped, his eyes downcast with guilt. "Don't thank me," he said, sullen. "You could've died, and the whole time I was… I was an awful husband." She frowned, looking confused. "Cindy… I cheated. I hate myself for it, but I did."

"I know," she sighed. "I heard you talking to her on the phone the other night."

"The other night?" said Beckett, interrupting. "But you said you ended things with Andrea months ago."

Cindy seemed surprised to see Beckett and Castle in her hospital room, but continued to speak anyway. "Andrea?" she said. "No, it was Kristen he was talking to. That girl you were visiting up in Scarsdale."

At that moment, two things ran through Castle's mind- a memory of a woman saying "Men think they're smart. The trick is to keep letting them think it" (he wasn't quite sure where the memory came from), and the image of Andrea's sister, Kristen, who lived in Scarsdale.

* * *

Kristen Methay sat at the table in the interrogation room, looking incredibly stressed out and worried. Castle and Beckett watched her from the observation booth. They'd picked her up just over an hour ago, with a warrant to search her apartment for arsenic and the black clothing of Mrs. Grainger's assailant. "You mind if I'm in there alone?" said Beckett.

"Are you actually asking?" he replied, slightly amused.

"No." She walked away from him and into the interrogation room. Kristen glanced up as she sat down across the table, but gave no other indication that anyone else had entered the room. "Kristen," said Beckett.

"I didn't do it." It sounded like she'd repeated the phrase over and over again for the past hour, rehearsing for a badly delivered lie. Or maybe she was trying to convince herself, to erase from her mind what she had done.

"You loved Hank Grainger, didn't you?" said Beckett. She tried to stay calm, almost comforting. Despite the 99% surety she had that Kristen had poisoned her sister, she knew that the girl wasn't a cold-hearted assassin.

"Does it matter?" she asked, looking away. "He'd never want me now." Kate took that as a semi-confession and barreled ahead.

"You were in love with him, but he'd never leave his wife," she continued. "And when you found out that he had another mistress, that she was your sister, you must have been furious. So you came up with a plan. You could get poison somewhere. It wouldn't be too hard to make a copy of Hank's key." She paused, waiting for Kristen to object or to ask for a lawyer, but Kristen remained silent. "It must have been tearing you up inside, and you still didn't have the man you killer her for. The job wasn't done. So you broke into the Graingers' home and attempted to kill his wife, having no idea that her husband was in the other room." Kristen stared at her hands folded in her lap, and Kate had a bizarre moment where she felt like an elementary school teacher reprimanding a child for biting another kid, instead of a homicide detective accusing a woman of siblicide.

"Andrea had no idea how to take care of Henry," said Kristen. "She was lost, and she barely even loved the kid. He was a curse to her. _I _loved him, and I loved Hank, more than anyone else did." Kate nodded slowly, extracting a confession form from the file in front of her. "We could have been a family. A happy little family and it would have been perfect." A sob she must not have been expecting erupted from her throat, and she sniffed.

"Did you poison Andrea Methay?" Kristen looked like she just wanted to get away from Beckett, away from the sharp lights of the interrogation chamber.

"Yes," she whispered.


	12. Chapter 12

About an hour after Kristen Methay had been taken away in handcuffs, Beckett stood by her desk filling in Castle and Captain Montgomery. "Just goes to show how crazy some people will go over jealousy, even so far as killing her own sister," she said.

"What about the ninja?" hissed Castle between his teeth, clearly on edge. To her, the case was over, but Castle was still worked up over the ninja. The ninja which privately she had believed to be nonexistent- that is, until an hour ago.

"I got Ryan and Esposito to look into that," she said, trying not to laugh. "Evidently, it was just a crazed fan of your books trying to steal your _Heat Rises_ manuscript. I'm guessing it's a very good thing he didn't know that you thought you were Jameson Rook at the time."

Castle gasped in a mocking way, staring at her. "Detective Beckett, concerned about my well-being?" She just rolled her eyes at him, sat down at her desk, and began filling out her paperwork.

"Well, I should be getting home," said Castle, nodding goodbye to the Captain. "I've probably got some kind of pop quiz on my identity waiting to ambush me at home." He waved to the rest of precinct, got a couple nods in return, and hopped into the elevator.

Beckett watched the doors slide shut, smiled to herself, and went back to her work.

* * *

Rick could hear muffled voices coming from his apartment as he walked down the hallway. He didn't pay much mind to it until he got closer and was able to make out the words. A hand on the knob, he froze and leaned against the crack between the door and the doorframe to listen. Martha and Alexis were inside, conversing. Alexis sounded distressed.

"…like I don't even have a dad anymore," he heard his daughter say, choking back a sob. "He doesn't even recognize me, I can see it in his eyes." Guilt clenched around Castle's stomach, and he pressed his ear against the door.

"Alexis, darling, you know he loves you," Martha consoled her. "He'll get over this soon."

"How do you know?" Alexis said, her voice bleak. Castle sighed and slumped against the wall beside the door.

"I don't," he murmured.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Kate was finding it difficult to focus on her paperwork. The bullpen was quiet- as the hours had passed it had steadily emptied of detectives. She stayed, marking up a thick pile of forms and humming tunelessly to herself when she grew tired. Surprisingly, she came to realize that she _was _worried about Castle. She worried about his psychological problems, about whether there would be worse long-term effects of his incident. She groaned and yanked her hair back in a ponytail, shaking her head to clear her thoughts.

As though she'd mentally summoned him, Castle appeared beside her desk. "Hey," she said. She glanced up at him, wondering if he'd forgotten his jacket.

"When I get my memory back, how much am I going to hate myself for forgetting Alexis?" he said. He seemed very troubled. Beckett could see the struggle and torment lying beneath his thin layer of control. She fought back the urge to give him a hug.

"Too much," she said honestly. He collapsed into the chair beside her desk, hanging his head in his hands. "What's wrong?"

"She was crying," said Castle. "Because of me."

"She's a teenage girl," she shrugged. "From personal experience I can tell you that they cry a lot."

"Not Alexis," he argued, shaking his head. "She told me all her personal history when I was being schooled in how to be myself, and I can count on one hand the number of times she's cried after she was a toddler." He held out a hand to demonstrate and started counting down, sticking a finger up for every example. "When I divorced her mom, when I divorced my other wife, when she broke up with her boyfriend, when her best friend had to move, when _Firefly_ was cancelled, the time her pet turtle died…" He glanced down at his hands to see that he'd had to open up his other hand. "If I were polydactyl I would totally be winning this argument."

"Well, Holloway says we're just going to have to wait and see," she shrugged, leaning back in her chair. He looked tired, she noticed, extremely tired, like he was carrying the enormous weight of his mental condition and it threatened to make him collapse. "In the meantime, Ryan and Esposito had the idea to gather up all the files of the cases you've worked with us. Might jog your memory."

"Will it work?" asked Castle. He looked scared and vulnerable. Once again she had to work to resist hugging him.

"It might." He nodded, understanding that the plan could backfire. The two of them glanced up to see Ryan and Esposito heading towards them.

"Here they are," said Ryan, handing Beckett a thick file full of papers. "The reports of every case Castle has ever worked with us."

"Yeah, and Mr. Hero Worship added all of Castle's quips and crazy theories," said Esposito. She flipped to a random page and, sure enough, there were the words "Somebody hated his guts."

"I was just trying to make it personal," shrugged Ryan defensively. "Anyway, that should help him get back to being himself. And if it doesn't, there's always Plan B."

"Plan B is called 'Hit Him on the Head with a Shovel Until He Remembers Who He Is'," said Esposito. Beckett handed the file to Castle, who began skimming them immediately. They watched him carefully for a few minutes as his eyes flew across the pages.

"Anything?" Ryan finally asked.

"Well, this sounds familiar," he said, pointing to the paper. " 'Go ahead, I need the practice.'" Ryan and Esposito looked hopeful, but Beckett groaned.

"That's in the book," she sighed.

"Time to get the shovel?" asked Ryan.

"No," she said, deliberating. "I've got a better idea. Actually, it's a really, really bad idea. But all our good ideas struck out, so…" She turned to Ryan and Esposito. "Close your eyes."

"What?" said Esposito. The command made no sense, and whatever the reason, he was reluctant to shut his eyes in most situations.

"Just do it," she snapped. They obliged, worried about what would happen if they kept resisting her. Listening carefully, they heard a rustle of fabric, Castle's sharp intake of breath, and then Beckett told them to open their eyes. They did. The scene looked the same, but for Castle's stunned expression.

"Well, I've never seen those before," he mumbled.

"Exactly," huffed Beckett sharply, "which means that we've never had sex, which means I'm not Nikki Heat."

"You're not," he realized, staring at her. "You're Kate Beckett. My name is Rick Castle." He looked around the room, reminding her of Dorothy at the end of _The Wizard of Oz_.

"Yes," she sighed with relief.

"I have a daughter, Alexis," he continued as everything came rushing back to him. "I'm your plucky sidekick." She nodded enthusiastically. "I'm ruggedly handsome."

"Sure," she shrugged.

"I can't believe you flashed him," said Ryan.

"I can't believe it worked," said Esposito.

"I'm a cop," she said facetiously. "As a group we tend to be unpredictable." She smiled at them, as they headed into the elevator, leaving Beckett and the newly mostly-sane Castle alone in the bullpen.

"She actually went that far," Ryan marveled as the elevator descended.

"Told you," said Esposito, accepting Ryan's twenty-dollar bill.

* * *

After packing up for the night, Beckett walked with Castle to the elevator. He still seemed a bit disoriented as he recovered his mind, and he remembered almost nothing of the past few days. It was like he'd been sleepwalking. She'd already decided to walk him home and make sure he got to his loft safely.

"So was I any help?" he asked hopefully as they boarded the elevator.

"Some," she shrugged. "No more than usual." She smirked at him. "It's too bad you can't remember the case, though. You would've liked it. There was a twist."

"Victim's spouse!" he guessed.

"Bigger twist."

"Esposito!"

"Smaller twist." She couldn't help smiling at him. "I have to admit, it's good to have you back."

"It's good to be back, Beckett," he replied. Now they were back to normal- the games, the glances, the complicated web of subtle smiles and accidental brushes that made up their relationship. "It's good to be back."

THE END


End file.
